The invention relates to an en-mass conveyor and, more particularly, one for vertical or steep delivery of bulk material.
A known en-mass conveyor has a corrugated-edge, material-conveying endless belt. The belt is arranged with a leg which moves horizontally at the bottom end of the conveyor to feed the bulk material to be conveyed into the conveyor before turning for lifting the material. Flexible flights are arranged on another endless belt so that, as they turn around a bottom-end pulley, the flights dig into the bulk material and contact, flexibly, the carrying surface of the corrugated-edge belt as the two belts then lift the material, between them.
In this conveyor, the bottom-end, horizontal leg of the corrugated-edge belt causes increased wear on the corrugated-edge belt and on the corresponding, additional guiding rollers and deflection pulleys required. The penetration of the flights into the bulk material also leads to a relatively-high wearing rate of both belts and, in addition, the repetitive penetration-bending of the flights causes fatigue failure of the flights. Finally, this conveyor calls for maximum uniformity in loading the horizontal conveyor leg because, failing this, the filling of the cross-sectional area to the lift-conveying shaft between the belts will not be optimum or, where an excessive amount of bulk material is conveyed horizontally, high side forces are liable to arise in the vertical, lifting leg of the conveyor.
A bucket-elevator elevating conveyor is also known. Its buckets are filled via lateral chutes, each of which has the bulk material fed to it by a bucket-wheel. Bucket elevators, however, because they have empty spaces between the buckets, have a relatively lower delivery rate than a belt conveyor for the same cross-section and speed.